Everything You Need To Know About The PlayStation 4

Sony today brought the world's best developers together to show off its latest console: the much-vaunted, long-awaited PlayStation 4. We live blogged the event and in here you'll find all the other coverage you need to know to be an instant expert.

Live Blog:

Scroll from bottom to top to follow the whole event as it happened, or click one of our pictures to see the full gallery.

12:06pm
Thanks for joining our live blog coverage! Are you excited for the PS4?

12:05pm
Nope. No look at what the PS4 actually looks like, but it is coming Holiday 2013, so that November timeframe looks about right.

12:01pm
Sony is now wrapping up...BUT WE HAVEN'T SEEN THE CONSOLE YET?! Hopefully we get a look at it after this wrap video.

11:59am
Co-founder of Bungie is giving us some more in-engine peeks at Destiny right now. The PS4 will get exclusive content for Destiny when it launches.

11:58am
Activision is partnering with Bungie to put games on the PS4. Looks like Destiny is coming to PS4!

11:57am
CEO of Activision is up for the last partner to show off new games. Can we see the console yet?

11:54am
Blizzard is bringing Diablo 3 to the PS4! Demos and answers coming at PAX East.

11:51am
SVP Chris Metzen from Blizzard is up now to talk about some sweet games, presumably. "Many of you are wondering why an old-school PC studio is here crashing the Sony party...we have announced a new partnership [Blizzard and Sony] with which we will take over the world."

11:46am
Live demo of Watch Dogs? YES PLEASE. God, who do I throw money at to get this game now?

11:43am
Here comes co-founder of Ubisoft Yves Guillemot. Time for some Watch Dogs amazement. I can't wait for this game.

11:42am
Square Enix just announced a new Final Fantasy set to debut at this year's E3.

11:41am
Oooh. Square Enix has a surprise for us. Sounds like new Final Fantasy!

11:39am
Square Enix's new game has actually been shown before, at last year's E3. Now we know it's next-gen!

11:35am
About to see some sweet new gear from Final Fantasy studio, Square Enix.

11:32amDeep Down is the working title for Capcom's new IP running on the Panta Rhei engine. Some of these look pre-rendered to us. I think half of it is gameplay though. Screenshots up shortly.

11:30am

A new engine has been developed to make Capcom's new PS4 games look awesome. It's code-named Panta Rhei.

11:28am
Yoshinori Ono from Capcom is up now. Street Fighter time! Ono says he wanted to tweet about it so bad!

11:26am
Media Molecule just made the Move relevant with an awesome sculpture dance demo.

11:22am
Media Molecule has had troubles getting beyond the polygon when it made games. What it's using to create sculpted games now is the PlayStation Move controller. He says it's like cloud-watching where you can reach up and sculpt the clouds.

10:49am
The first game we're seeing? It's called Killzone: Shadowfall and my God, is it beautiful.

10:48am
We're now getting a look at launch titles. First up, Guerilla Games with a future-war game. Pics coming soon.

10:47am

I'm hearing the word "synergy" a few too many times...

10:45am
So the PS4 isn't compatible with native PS3 games after all. Sorry, old discs...Cloud all the things!

10:40am
Now we're about to hear about cloud game streaming from a few developers.

10:38am
CEO of Gakai confirms that the PS4 will stream PlayStation 3 games, but is it back compatible?

10:36am

I'm starting to get the feeling that Sony has released the PlayStation 4 to sell more PlayStation Vitas. Do you have one? Excited about it finally being relevant?

10:36am
Of course PlayStation has a second screen experience. Unlike Xbox Smartglass, however, PlayStation is tapping into its own handheld — the PS Vita — to let you stream games from your console to continue playing. GAME OVER, WII U.

10:35am
If you're stuck, you can hit the Share button and give a friend access to your controller to stream your game to them, letting them take over and finish a particular section for you. New hacking and farming opportunities right there, folks. Excited so far?

10:34am
The Share button on the new PlayStation 4 controller will let you live stream your games to all of your friends to improve the spectator experience. Friends will also be able to "look over your shoulder virtually". Creepy.

10:33am
There's a lot of talk here about what PlayStation and PlayStation Network will do for social. Gaikai CEO says that Facebook doesn't know a damn thing about your preferences. He says they want to create the world's first gaming social network.

10:32am
The PlayStation 4 will let you know when your friend buys a game so you can buy it too and join in with them. The store is also ging to let you stream game demos from the sounds of things.

10:31am
CEO of Gaikai is up. Expect some more social news for a few minutes.

10:30am
And onto the next section! The awful UStream feed is reportedly blocking out new streamers, so if you close your connection to the live stream, you might have a few problems getting back in. We'll bring you the news as best we can with this stream.

10:28am
Sony will feature a new recommendation engine for the next game you play. "If we can predict the next game you'll play, we can have that game pre-loaded and ready to go.

10:25am
The social aspects will let you upload gameplay sessions and will let you reach out to a friend when they get into trouble in a game to "take over the controller and help them out". Heads up, noob friends. PlayStation got your back.

10:24am
Social things are in there too. Does anyone really do social on their console?

10:23am
Sony is promising a resume experience on the PlayStation 4that means that when you put the power off, you can still resume your titles within seconds. You'll also be able to play games as they're downloaded.

10:17am

And here's the new controller! It has rumble! Also has a share button, a light bar to see who each player is and a touch pad. You've also got a camera on there so you can see what's up.

10:16am

The new PlayStation has a better GPU, CPU and 8GB of RAM.

10:10am

It's official! We're going to meet the PlayStation 4 over the next few hours.

10:08am
All we're getting right now is the world's record attempt for buzzword bingo. Meanwhile, the stream is having a few issues.

10:06am
Sounds like PlayStation Vita is about to be expanded to the living room.

10:03am
Andrew House, president of Sony Computer Entertainment is now on-stage, promising a "bold step forward".

10:01am
And we're underway! We start with a retrospective of all of PlayStation's most popular games and ads. Sony says that imagination is the key to fighting reality. The last 20 years of PlayStation sure have been fun.

9:57am
We're three minutes away and the number of people on the feed right now is close to two million. This is nuts!

9:45am
15 minutes! Get pumped! So what do you want to see from the new PlayStation? If it is even a new PlayStation, of course.

9:37am
We're just under 30 minutes away from this huge PlayStation announcement, and I'm getting excited. People are taking their seats right now at the Manhatten Centre in New York City and the room looks to be quite something already. Remember, you can also live stream the event over here, and you can tune in to the news and thoughts of Kotaku's Mark Serrels over here.

Social networking is a key feature of PS network and PS 4 going forward? Really?
2 year out of date market analysis at its best.
Didn't Microsoft prove that no one uses or wants social networking on their consoles when they added Facebook and Twitter.
There is already enough social networking within games themselves. That's why we have online multiplayer.

Between my phone, tablet and laptop, I dont really need social media cluttering up what is meant to be for playing games.
Although vid chats on the PS3 and 360 was cool for a while. Very convenient for Family to family chats.
Actually on the Xbox, social media was just another damn page I'd have to skip past to get to the my games page.

I was rather disappointed by that, too, but it is not surprising after it became obvious a few months ago that the CPU had changed. I've seen some comments from people saying to keep the PS3 and just use that to play games; however, that misses the point. I don't want a lounge-room cluttered with myriad different consoles . . . I just want one. Oh well, no worries, I'll still buy a PS4.

Of course PlayStation has a second screen experience. Unlike Xbox Smartglass, however, PlayStation is tapping into its own handheld — the PS Vita — to let you stream games from your console to continue playing. GAME OVER, WII U.

Things like this is why you aren't liked on this site Luke, How is it game over, Wii U? incase you haven't noticed, but not many people own a Vita.

Mate, I'm not entirely sure what I have done to offend you so, but as I dredge back through your comment history, I have found that the only person who really has a personal problem with how I do my job is you. I don't know if you're back from the future to harass me because I kicked some puppies or destroyed the universe or something, but it seems serious enough for you to continually victimise me and demonised my coverage, almost since my very first day here.

If you want to chat more about the personal issues you have with me, shoot me an email on [email protected] and we can talk it out. Otherwise, let's just calm down with the venom. Nobody likes a keyboard warrior.

We're trying to bring a pub mentality to the comments here. In the comments, I want you to imagine we're all hanging out at a pub, shooting the shit, grabbing a schnitzel from the bistro perhaps. If what you plan on saying to someone on here would get you punched in the nose in a pub, you can be sure it's no longer welcome here. I want to encourage this as a friendly place for people to come hang out and talk about tech, so that one day maybe we can all meet up in a pub or somewhere similar to have an awesome time.

I don't like using the hand sets, PS3, XBox whatever, never have especially in FPS games. Will it support keyboard and mouse in game?
Because I would rather pay a couple of hundred on something I will use rather on a controller that I won't
I already have a PS3 and an Xbox setup and collecting dust because even the kids prefer playing on their PCs for the very same reason. Gonna need more than awesome graphics and connectivity to crap devices I will probably never own Besides the 3 gaming PC's we already have have awesome graphics and are already connected to every other device in the house and the internet anyway.. x86?? Does that mean they are still using 32bit architecture? Enhanced PC GPU?? Maybe they had the Deli Lama bless each unit as they were being installed or something. All I'm seeing is a lot of marketing Hype and So far I'm not really that impressed.

Did you just "troll" in here, to shoot the "PCs are sooo better" crap.
Consoles and Pc's are different beasts, get over it.
We are here because we are interested in the PS4 and as gamers would like to know if it will enhance our next gaming experience.
This isn't a football team, setting your self up in a corner going "Go team PC" gets old.
Again why are you here?
So concluding from what you ranted, I guess you aren't going to buy one.

For starters 8gb ram it can't be 32bit I think they are specifying x86 as the ps3 was powerpc. Mouse and keyboard via usb same as ps3. And pc based gpu instead of a purpose built gpu but hopefully without the bus limitations of a pc.

I don't even understand the point of todays Playstation event. Just to announce before Microsoft do? Sony don't even have a console to announce, just a lot of fluff about how they'll be doing things differently, games coming and a controller.

A press release reveals that the PS4's PC-like configuration will include an 8-core 64-bit x86 "Jaguar" CPU built by AMD, with a Radeon GPU comprised of 18 "compute units" capable of cranking out 1.84 TFLOPS to process graphics and more. Its Blu-ray drive -- yes, it will still have one of those -- spins at a brisk 6X (8X for DVDs) and as mentioned on stage, it packs 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM capable of 176GB/sec of bandwidth. 802.11n WiFi, USB 3.0, Bluetooth 2.1, HDMI, optical out and even a legacy analog AV out make up the inputs and outputs, although the potential amounts of storage are still unspecified.

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